Organising, valuing and improving the engineering design process

Research for improving the design process (DP) has become crucial in new work organisations. Today, projects involve more and more activities and work groups which must be efficiently coordinated. In this paper, a method for structuring cooperative activities in order to improve its global performance is proposed. This methodological approach is based on matrix modelling and graph theory to represent and to structure information dependencies and can be used to specify collaborative frameworks like Web technology environments. Knowledge of a specific DP depends on acquired experience in relatively similar projects. That is why we refer in this work to standards like ISO 9001 requirements and capability maturity model integration (CMMI). CMMI models are collections of best practices that help organisations to improve their processes. Classical methods decompose a project into several work groups which are then scheduled. This first decomposition level is supplemented with a more detailed structuring level in order to control the size of the working teams. The steps of the DP being defined and planned, the responsibilities inside the working groups are specified. Finally, the method proposes to identify the coupled pairs of actors who generate the best interface for the effectiveness of the cooperative work.